by Dave Norris, Heritage Golf Club Superintendant

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Stump Grinding

The stump grinder was delivered to us late Friday afternoon. The thawing temperatures will keep us close to the path for the beginning part of next week but we will still be able to get started with stumps. For us, this is far and away the worst part of tree removal. It takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes to grind a medium size stump but it takes slightly longer for 3 people to manually clean out that same stump. The material is shoveled into our utility vehicles and taken to our dump. Repeat this process until all stumps have been ground out. Now start all over and haul fresh topsoil to every one of those stumps. Dirt is added until it is slightly overfilled and then run over repeatedly with our utility vehicles or a tractor. This packs down the dirt fairly well. We then come back to every stump 3 to 4 weeks later and run them over again and add soil until they are level and smooth. We then either seed or sod the areas.

The reality of the situation is that we don’t like to remove trees at all. If it wasn’t for the Emerald Ash Borer, I could count the trees we needed to remove this year on 1 hand. Tree removal is a very labor intensive and time consuming process and we could be spending our time elsewhere on the golf course. Unfortunately, a dead or dying tree is a major liability if anyone is near it so they need to be removed as quickly as possible to ensure everyone’s safety.